The state of Illinois has some of the highest property taxes in the country and this year that number climbed, with some homeowners seeing a near 30-percent rise year over year in their tax burden.
Last year, Illinois had the second highest rate of property taxes in the country — topped only by New Jersey — with an annual average burden of $4,942 per home. But with the changes made this year, it seems likely that Illinois may claim the top spot for the worst property taxes anywhere.
Property taxes exploded in the Land of Lincoln in 2023. According to a recent study by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office, property owners saw the largest tax increase in thirty years.
Some of the towns in Cook that rose the worst were Schiller Park at 29.7% and Des Plaines at 28.7%. Many others saw between eight and 20 percent hikes. Overall, property taxes in the county rose 5.4 percent going from $16.7 billion last year to $17.6 billion this year. And Cook is not the only one of the state’s 102 counties suffering this fate.
But, while this is a huge bitter pill for Illinois citizens and puts owning a home even father out of reach for lower and middle-income families and young people, it is nothing new for Illinois. Property taxes have been a scourge for the state for decades and rates have kept the state in the top half of the worst rates for years.
It was so bad in the late 1960s, for instance, that state officials created the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board so that citizens had a way to ease their tax burden.
Notice the pattern this reveals: Illinois politicians create a scheme giving the state punishing property taxes. Illinois politicians then make a grand gesture of creating a board that can cut those taxes for those citizens who apply for a reassessment, making it look like the state really cares about being fair.
All that instead of just lowering property taxes.
But wait, there’s more.
In the past few years, cities and state government officials have been complaining about how much money they have “lost” by appeals of tax assessments. And since businesses are fleeing the state, they have also “lost” billions in business property taxes.
So, what did Illinois do? It passed the Local Government Revenue Recapture Act, a law that allows cities, counties, and the state’s hundreds of different taxing bodies to “reacapture” their “lost” revenue and also to shift the higher tax burden from the disappearing business property taxes to home owners, causing a near 30 percent jump in some cases in the burden on the state’s families.
The act allows state taxing bodies to take the amount they “lost” to appeals refunds, total that up, and then just raise taxes that amount, effectively nullifying the appeals decisions and acting as a yearly new stealth, backdoor tax hike.
Naturally, the vote for this new measure in the Democrat-dominated legislature was unanimous.
But not everyone is so appreciative of Democrat taxing guile. Even Democrat Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas blasted the new law saying, “It’s an automatic increase with no oversight. And it’s a bad deal for taxpayers because their taxes go up,” the Daily Herald reported.
This law also allows taxing bodies to ignore the state’s property tax cap law, which limits them to hikes of only five percent a year, or the rate of inflation, whichever is lowest.
Unsurprisingly, this act was heavily pushed by the rapacious schools and teachers unions which are hungrily grasping for ever more tax dollars despite the fact that families are fleeing the state by the tens of thousands and taking their kids with them thereby ending with fewer and fewer kids attending Illinois schools every year.
On that latter point, WTTW reported in 2021 that 70,000 fewer students were enrolled in Illinois schools that year. That was the same year the legislature passed this Recapture Act backed by the schools and teachers unions that said they needed more money.
Enrollment has continued to drop, too. In January, it was reported that Illinois schools had lost another 31,000 students between 2022 and the first month of 2023, a decline of another 1.7 percent that year, Chalkbeat Chicago reported.
So, let’s recap. Illinois politicians implemented some of the highest property taxes in the nation putting a burden on Illinois families. Illinois politicians then magnanimously created an appeal board so citizens could feel like they had an advocate to lower their tax hit and get a refund. Then Illinois politicians passed a new rule to allow taxing bodies to just hike taxes the exact amount of the refund citizens received, effectively nullifying the refund board and forcing homeowners to simply pay back their refund in a higher tax rate the next year.
If that isn’t organized theft, what is?
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
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